Early in 2009 I got it in my head to ride the Seattle to Portland (STP) bike ride. I wasn't a cyclist, owning just a used, heavy steel bike that I tooled around in some during the previous two-three years. Doing 10 miles here, 15 there, every other week or so. Nothing much.
But I had heard about the STP somewhere, and decided to do it.
I bought a new "better" bike. It was also steel. Cost $400. Right there you know what kind of quality it was. But it was still a better bike than I was a cyclist.
I started riding. That spring I rode and rode and rode, pushing myself to the point of exhaustion many times. I was starting late in life, at age 61, to be a cyclist.....I guess.
I finished the STP, and have not been the same since. It is the most important, non-person-related, event/accomplishment/whatever in my life.
Shortly after that STP I began a series of orthopedic operations. I spent the next three winters having foot operations. It took three of them to rebuild my foot (which now works great, by the way). I also had two more shoulder operations, having already had a rotator cuff repair the previous year.
In 2010 I had planned on doing the STP again, but my foot didn't heal in enough time to train. Instead, I rented an apartment in Seattle, and rode 2000+ miles on the Burke-Gilman to try to get back into shape after four months of complete inactivity recovering from surgery. In 2011, Jules, Sean, and I did the ride. It's hard to believe that it was five years ago that we did this together.
I had met Vicky, and told her that it was probably my final STP. She encouraged me to keep riding, telling me she would help me train for another STP if I wanted to do it. Little did either of us realize that within a few weeks of us riding together that it was clear she was strong enough to do the STP and was interested in doing so.
So, we have kept riding, having now completed five STPs together.
In addition to the five orthopedic operations I have had since I started cycling in 2009, we have dealt with a number of other age-related medical issues. I have been diagnosed with a heart murmur, so my heart isn't as efficient as it otherwise might be (although I have no symptoms---more on that later). Vicky has had skin cancer removed, requiring time when we could do nothing even as active as walking until her grafts healed. She has also had arthritis developing in her back as the result of being rear ended in a car accident several years ago, necessitating the insertion of a titanium disk in her back.
But through all of this we have kept riding, when we are at home, and can. For about half of the year we are away from home and our bikes, usually roaming the southwest deserts camping and hiking.
So to have accumulated 15,000 miles since I first decided to do the STP in 2009 is an important achievement for me, and for us.
Important because I am convinced that without the constant encouragement of Vicky I would not be as healthy physically as I otherwise would be. Those operations were slogs of just sitting while my foot healed. And my doctors have told me that because of my high physical activity level my heart has adjusted itself (in some mysterious way) so that I have no symptoms. I will need surgery on it some day, but if I keep my activity level high I may be able to avoid that for many years----hopefully.
Everything I have read suggests that the only control you have over your health is to eat right and move. Just move. Move doing anything, but just move and move a lot and move often. So that's what we do.
And important for us because we have so much fun together with our cycling. Early next season we will pass a milestone for the two of us--10,000 miles cycling together. We are within a few hundred miles of it.
Vicky took a photo of my at the exact point where I crossed 15,000 miles (now, understand that for the first year much of my mileage was estimates based on maps, and for the second year was based on a mechanical odometer, but so OK it's only a pretend exact place----but that's good enough for us).
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